Xeric Xeriscope: An Amusing Piece of Junk

Watch bloggers tend to be quite fawning, either because they are trying to justify the expense of their hobby or to curry favor with the manufacturers. But this isn’t going to be a fawning post. Today’s Kickstarter-special Xeric Xeriscope “Watch A Day” is a piece of junk, flawed in design, poorly finished, and unfriendly to use.

The Xeric Xeriscope is massive, with a chunky case and thick strap, and the open heart carousel movement only looks cool at a distance

Let me get this out of the way to start: No one will be happy with this watch. Casual buyers will be annoyed by how hard it is to read and set, not to mention the fact that it just stops working sometimes. Watch enthusiasts will loathe the horrible finishing work and unmet yet pretentious aspirations of the thing. It’s just a really bad watch.

Let’s begin with Kickstarter. Xeric was launched there by the people behind Wachismo.com, and the whole thing is now doing business as Watches.com. Like many Kickstarter watch projects, the Xeriscope was advertised in Apple-esque fashion and even includes the legend “Designed in California” on the back. The reality is a little more mundane: Their Chinese supplier put an existing movement (the PTS Resources ST-1201) into a common case and packaged it with a customized dial and crown.1

I’m not calling this a scam or ripoff, just pointing out that the paper sketches on the Kickstarter page are disingenuous marketing. This is true of most crowd-funded watches: The only thing custom is the packaging and branding. And it’s not far from the history of Swiss watchmaking, as celebrated yesterday on this very blog! The meaningful difference is that the Xeric Xeriscope is unreliable junk while that Levrette chronograph has an excellent movement and remains wearable more than 50 years later.

You’re supposed to tell the hour using the blue arrow on the carousel at the bottom of the dial and the minutes using the weird double hoop hand at the top, but it’s so hard to read and set the time accurately that you might as well just look at your phone

So let’s talk about the watch. Usability-wise, it’s a disaster. The movement is an automatic 12-hour carousel with an arrow to indicate the hour in the open heart dial. This is pretty hard to read, thanks to the bling of the movement and tiny numerals on the dial. Minutes are supposed to be read using the “double halo” hand above, on an inner/outer half-scale with markings almost every 5 minutes. Perhaps this confusingly-awful minutes scale is why they busied up the hour track with 15-minute markers. At least you might know roughly what time it is.

Making the dial even more busy are an hour-hand second timezone subdial and retrograde power reserve indicator. The “Dual Time” display is the best-designed, most legible part of the whole watch; if only the rest of the watch was this usable! The power reserve indicator shows a scale of “00” to “100”, which must indicate a percentage rather than the customary hours since we’ve only got a 50 hour power reserve to start with. My power reserve indicator is broken, always reading 110% just like a mathematically-challenged athlete.

There is no seconds hand, but that’s not really a problem because it’s almost impossible to set the watch accurately. The massive carousel has so much inertia that there’s an incredible 30 minutes or so of “spring” in the movement. Set it, push in the crown, and hope it jumps back to the right neighborhood on the dial. You’re never going to get closer than a minute or so of the correct time, so maybe it’s good that there are no minute markers or seconds hand. I would test the rate of the movement, said to be “+/-10 to 15 seconds a day”, but I just don’t care.

Plus, the watch often just stops working when I try to set it. It’s not hacking; it’s just unreliable. Since the escapement is right there, you can watch the balance wheel slow and stop. So far it has restarted after I wiggle it a bit and pull and press the crown a couple of times. But this does not bode well for the quality or reliability of the watch.

Most of the action happens on the dial side, so the reverse just shows the rotor, a few gears, and some really horrible finishing work on the movement

As noted, this is a carousel, not a tourbillon. And it’s not even a good one! Movements like this are meant to eliminate the effects of gravity on the escapement, so they need to rotate fairly frequently. This is already of questionable value in a wristwatch, which changes orientation far more often than the pocket watches for which tourbillons were designed. But it’s even more useless here, since this carousel has a pathetic 12-hour rotation period. Not to mention that gravity is the least concern with such a poorly-finished and unreliable movement.

You don’t need to use a loupe to see the flaws and imperfections on the hands and markers. Flip it over and cry at the wheels and plates in the movement. They look like they were pre-finished before being cut with a hacksaw or press, but even that work is horrid. Once again, Xeric didn’t hide this on their Kickstarter page: The “hero” shots of the dial and movement are laughably bad. Perhaps they hoped that would-be buyers were unaware of what real watch finishing looks like.

The slab-sided case is roughly brushed, the lugs are screwed, and the big crown has the Xeric logo inset

The case is actually pretty good for a mass-produced watch. The sides are brushed and the lugs look nice enough. The case and lug edges are less blobby than most cheap watches. The crown is pretty nice, and I like the look of the inlaid Xeric logo. Mine has the flat “sapphire” crystal of later models instead of the “K1” domed glass found on the initial versions. Note that both types are just coated glass, not real sapphire.

The Xeric strap is massive and chunky like the Xeriscope itself

Considering the massive size of the watch, the big fat leather strap is appropriate. It’s “genuine leather” and resembles something a cow once wore, but is not high quality skin. The strap is not tapered at all, so the pin buckle is bigger than my Reverso.

The power reserve indicator on my Xeriscope is broken

The Xeric Xeriscope is not an enjoyable watch. Mine was $349 on Kickstarter, and I feel it’s not worth even that. The finishing and usability is so bad I can’t even enjoy the novelty of the open heart carousel movement. I thought I knew what I was getting, but I didn’t know it would be this bad.

My advice for Kickstarter watches is to skip it and get a decent inexpensive watch from a known brand: Orient, Seiko, Squale, and Tissot all make far-better watches for Kickstarter money. And so far I haven’t found a fancy Chinese-made watch worth buying either.

I’m wearing and blogging about a different watch from my collection each day of April, 2018. Check back here for our “Watch A Day” series, follow us on Twitter and Instagram, and like us on Facebook!

About Stephen

Comments

i saw this watch on kickstarter and it seemed impractical to me, indeed so much so that i thought there must be some subtle horological genius being executed here that’s over my head.

so it is interesting to read an expert opinion of the watch (from an expert who actually purchased one)

aside from that, this review was hilarious to read; clearly your disappointment had reached such a level that further criticism seems comical–eg, “The strap is not tapered at all, so the pin buckle is bigger than my Reverso”

The same watch and movement can be found as ‘Nesun’ for less than US$95 from Chinese dealers with free shipping worldwide.
I was tempted to buy it at that price, but reading your devastating review I am wondering if it is worth ANYTHING at all? Like you I dislike the weird face layout, half-ass minute scale etc.
I do enjoy collecting cheap mechanical watches, have a lot of China made models from Cadisen, GuanQin, Carnival etc. They do have neat functions like big dates, power reserve indicators, retrograde date hands etc; decent cases and bands, rather impressive appearance and readability.

At prices around $30-50 I risk opening them myself to fix hand alignments, speed issues etc. With a little fiddling these China automatic movements can run at honorable +/-5sec a day for long periods of time, without a gravity defying ‘tourbillion’..

This semi ‘tourbillon’ movement was on my wishlist for a while, but you are really blasting it in this review, making it hard to decide:
I wonder how you’d judge on a Cadisen C1030 ‘Nomos Lambda’ replica or a Carnival 8730G with a good (30-31-01-..) large date calendar? For me these watches (below $40 each) are great and fun to wear.
Maybe you are TOO critical or is it relative to the pricing? Feel free to reply, as I ‘subscribed’ to notifications!

Priced under $100, it might be fun to buy a Chinese carousel like the Xeric. It’s an interesting mechanical piece, and fun for watch nerds. Just don’t expect it to be usable, because no price discount is going to make the face legible or the movement accurate to more than 15 minutes!

I actually am impressed by the range of Chinese junk, and would be really interested in examining them up close. That Nomos-ish Cadisen looks actually cool, for example, though I’m hesitant to support such blatant copying.

I grabbed one (Nesun 9081) for less than 85Euro at AliExpress.
It ran slightly too slow (bummer, as it can only be set BACKWARDS, not forward).
So I took it apart and re-adjusted the escapement.
The watch runs now at +10s/day and -10s/night (positioned vertically on the nightstand); I have not wound nor adjusted the watch in three weeks; it runs perfectly. Yes, the position of the watch has a rather large impact on its speed; but why not take advantage of this weakness and use this ‘speed control’ as a feature?
How many of the expensive Swiss automatics will run without any time adjustment over three weeks??!

I also inked the hour pointer of the carousel to improve the readability.
Personally I prefer to read it by the regulator style minute and (second) hour hand.
Of course I cannot predict its longterm reliability, but an automatic carousel design watch for less than US$95 is definitely not a bad bargain, and a fun watch to add to the collection.

As to the China “Bauhaus” style watch: it is NOT a blatant copy, for two main reasons: it is a true and fully functional AUTOMATIC watch, and it does have a DATE window. The similar looking Nomos Lambda watch has neither. I LOVE my Cadisen 1030 for its clean looks, large display and accuracy: <6s/day after some adjustment on the bench. A steal for the price I paid, around 35Euro (US$39).

Next on my list of fun watches is a PTS minute tourbillon; they can be found in dubious 'GermAsia' watches like 'Graf von Monte Wehro', marketed like this Xeric for 3x its true value. The trick is to find them directly at Asian outlets, usually for $400 or less.
I enjoy the mechanics of watches, don't care for labels and name tags.
If you know how to open and fiddle with mechanic watches, a China tic-toc is absolutely OK to buy – YMMV